Burning the Old Year

Nye describes the letters, notes, lists, and poems she is burning as “flammable” (Line 6), meaning these articles are easily or readily able to be burned and destroyed. Letters signify correspondence between friends, family, and loved ones. Oftentimes, many people will choose to keep these letters as mementos of the past. Nye is choosing to burn them, which can be interpreted as a decided and sure destruction. Perhaps the letters are from a lost love or friendship, or an estranged family member. These letters could also be interpreted as meaningless correspondence between relations—letters describing the minor aspects of one another’s lives, not worth keeping. Again, it is also possible that this is a symbolic cleansing indicative of what many people undergo at the turn of the new year. Perhaps the speaker has made all the use she can of the items and simply seeks to abolish that which is contributing to the physical clutter of her living space. The broad audience could relate to this sort of “resolution,” as many people decide to “clean up” their lives at the turn of the new year.

The notes, lists, and unfinished poems are correspondence solely to the self and are meant to keep oneself on track, or to simply express a hurried but incomplete burst of poetic creation. These items are likely meaningless outside the time when they are written and as such, Nye chooses to burn them. Summarily, the reader can see how the flammable aspects of life signify inconsequential parts lost to the passage of time. The flammable represents what ends each year as people move into the next—not just the concrete letters and lists themselves, but the memories associated with them.